Daily Devotional - 1472 - The Locust and the Darkness

Daily Devotional – 1472 – The Locust and the Darkness 

Some thoughts for today by Papa “J”

The lazy countrymen of our nation should observe the ANT, it is the smallest of insects in some cases and yet among insects the wisest. The ant does not need a leader or an overseer and yet it has enough food for the winter because it knows when to harvest. Proverbs 6:6-8.

Comments and Challenges

While living in Hawaii in 1965 there was an experience worth talking about as it relates to the days in which we live. We had applied for Navy housing when we first arrived on the Island of Oahu but needed to move into off base housing and wait. This was a very nice private home in the small town of Eva Beach. After a year we got word that housing was available, so we gave notice to the owner that we would be moving out.

On the last day of our stay in this home I was required to turn the water off from the public water supply near the street. I opened the cover and heard a noise that told my mind, “Do not stick your hand in that hole!” Okay, I obeyed the voice of my mind, but a neighbor who I did not get along with was watching and he responded with. “What the problem?” I explained that I did not like the sound in the hole.

He came over and looked into the hole and heard the noise and with words under his breath reached in and shut the water off. When he withdrew his hand it was covered with red fire ants. He simply brushed them off and back into the hole, but his hand and wrist was full of red bite marks. He grinned and gave me the feeling that I was a wimp!  (Now Please: Use your thinking cap!)

Joel 1:1-12 - The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. Hear this, you elders, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land! Has anything like this happened in your days, Or even in the days of your fathers? Tell your children about it, Let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.

 

What the chewing locust left, the swarming locust has eaten; what the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten; and what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten. Awake, you drunkards, and weep; And wail, all you drinkers of wine, Because of the new wine, for it has been cut off from your mouth.

 

For a nation has come up against My land, Strong, and without number; his teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he has the fangs of a fierce lion. He has lain waste My vine, And ruined My fig tree; He has stripped it bare and thrown it away; Its branches are made white. Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth.

 

The grain offering and the drink offering have been cut off from the house of the Lord; The priests mourn, who minister to the Lord.  The field is wasted, the land mourns; for the grain is ruined, the new wine is dried up, the oil fails. Be ashamed, you farmers, wail, you vinedressers, for the wheat and the barley; because the harvest of the field has perished.

 

The vine has dried up, and the fig tree has withered; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree-- All the trees of the field are withered; Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men.

The pestilence of our nation’s day of judgment is NOT FUTURE, it is a very present invasion, from the small insect to the roaring lion whose fangs are digging in deeply into our national heritage and into our freedoms. We live today with mockers of our past histories; they mock at those who preserved our freedoms and heritage by celebrating “falsely” at the anniversaries of Freedom’s account of victory. 

The mockers (who are leaders) all come together from “all the nations involved” to stand before the tombs of great men. They give wonderful speeches of peace and safety, while their troops swarm the country side of some nation. They are aggressive as the three breeds of chewing, swarming and crawling locust. (But note there are four breeds).

All of this is done while we cannot agree with other. While other leaders give speeches that are like that dark hole of uncertainty. The loud hum of “I can see you! Leave me alone or if you care too, reach in; but I do bite and I will continue to nip at you and poison you with my counterfeit agenda of peace and safety”.

If I were a betting man I would say that the odds of “FIVE for ONE” is more like “SIX to NONE” in that such a gamble to FREE the FIVE for ONE  is not a gamble at all, but another swarm of locust, the CONSUMING LOCUST that intends to dine on our remaining freedoms. The fields of bravery are nearly bare and the crop of the future is still being aborted.